The Opening Gambit
by KitKatt0430
Summary: In the back of Hartley's mind, he was still hoping to find a rational explanation for the documents Cisco had brought him proving that the accelerator was going to explode. But then he tracked down those files in the system for himself and Harrison lied to him about why Cisco was fired. Time to rally the troops. (AU)


Summary: In the back of Hartley's mind, he was still hoping to find a rational explanation for the documents Cisco had brought him proving that the accelerator they'd been pouring their hard work into was going to explode. But then he tracked down those files in the system for himself - found even more damning evidence than just what Cisco was able to bring him in Starling - and Harrison lied to his face about what happened when Cisco was fired.

Time to rally the troops.

Notes: There's a timeline of events so far in the end notes. I'm moving everything along pretty quickly - unrealistically quickly, I'm sure. Part of a series currently including "The Problem With the Accelerator" and "Taking Care of Business"

_**The Opening Gambit**_

"Why haven't you called them yet?"

"I just... they're on their honeymoon, Hartley. I don't want to ruin that for them."

Hartley eyed the other man incredulously. "You don't honestly think they'll thank you to come back and find out you've been hiding this from them the whole time they were gone? They can have other vacations, Cisco, but we have a limited time to stop Harrison from turning on the accelerator - to hopefully halt all progress on the accelerator before he thinks its ready to go - and we need all hands on deck for this."

Cisco twisted his hands nervously. "What if they don't believe me?"

Rolling his eyes, Hartley resisted the urge to swat the other man with a nearby newspaper. It'd be so easy to just roll it up and... "I believed you, didn't I? And we barely tolerate each other. You're one of their best friends. Of course Raymond and Snow are going to believe you." Standing up from Cisco's couch, Hartley headed for the door. "I should head out. I've..." he felt his face twist along with his stomach at the thought. "I've got work in the morning."

Ramon looks guilty. Hartley's barely had any time off, any time to grieve for his friend's death. And maybe its awful of Hartley, but part of him is grateful to have something terrible to focus on. But he doesn't voice that out loud; he doubts it'd make Cisco feel any better.

"Laurel's supposed to be here at ten, right?" he asked at the door.

Cisco nods. "We'll be heading to meet her lawyer friends first to discuss..." he waved his hand to the coffee table, still littered with copies of STAR Labs reports that proved Harrison Wells duplicity in designing one accelerator... and building a completely different one. "Laurel will give you a call to let you know where to meet us in the afternoon."

Because, thank god, Hartley was only going in for a few hours in the morning.

He sighed and nodded. "I'll see you then."

* * *

Of course, Hartley barely sleeps that night and ends up not only back at STAR Labs far sooner than he ought to have been after his best friend died but way too early in the morning at that.

Harrison finds Hartley at the coffee machine in the break room at eight, not realizing Hartley's already been there for two hours, tracking down and re-copying every file Cisco managed to salvage after being fired. And then some. There were a lot of incriminating files to be found, it seemed, and Harrison had done the bare minimum to re-hide those files, clearly counting on no one bothering to look for them.

"Hartley, what are you doing here?"

And its all Hartley can do to keep from panicking at that question alone. But he calms himself because its a legitimate question and... Harrison wouldn't think that Ramon would go to Hartley for help. Not in a million years... because that wasn't how Harrison's brain worked. It wasn't how Hartley's worked either, but thank god it was how Cisco's did.

"I couldn't sleep and I needed to get out of my apartment and..." Hartley slumped against the counter a little. "I went for a drive and wound up here. My brain running on auto-pilot, I guess."

"I'm really sorry for your loss," Harrison tells him and it sounds genuine.

Harrison sounded genuine when he'd lied to Hartley's face time and again, though, and it made Hartley feel ill just being around him. Now Hartley has to wonder if there's anything genuine about this man at all.

"But you need to take time off, Hartley. For your own sake." Harrison pats Hartley's shoulder and Hartley did his best to turn his flinch into a yawn, covering his mouth with a hand.

Hartley's got a program sifting through all the hidden files on the network, copying and protecting them and he's spent most of the last two hours looking them over in increasing horror. So its not like he has to stay any longer.

"Mind if I just stay until lunch? I wanted to check over the simulations, make sure Ramon didn't botch the data input. Are you sure we can't find something that'll take .csv files?" Hartley kept his vocal cadence steady, natural, and tossed in one of his oft-repeated complaints, too. His voice took on a bit of a whine as he did; he was genuinely sick of that simulation program. There were better modeling programs they could be using, after all.

Which... the fact the program wasn't the best - was tedious and prone to user input error - was likely the reason Harrison wanted to stick with it. Dammit.

There something terrifyingly distant about the expression on Harrison's face; it made Hartley's skin crawl. "Oh, I finished that myself, Hartley. No reason to bother with that yourself."

Hartley frowned, tilted his head to the side. "You finished it? What, didn't trust your pet engineer to do simple data input?"

"I fired him."

There's a long silence. The coffee machine's beeping startles Hartley out of it. "I'm sorry. I must be having a bad auditory day, because I could have sworn you just said..."

"I fired him. You were right about Ramon being a bad fit for STAR Labs. No need to rub it in, Hartley."

"What the hell happened?" Hartley snapped. "No, no deflecting, Harrison," he adds when Harrison opens his mouth to tell what would probably be a very pretty lie. Harrison will probably end up telling it anyway, but Hartley wants to put it off even if only for a few moments. "I may not have liked the guy personally, but even I finally had to admit he was a fucking phenomenal mechanical engineer... though he didn't have the experience you promised me you'd hire when you were interviewing for that position. Losing him could set us back, especially since Ronnie doesn't get back for another week and I'm..." Hartley shook his head. "What could he have possibly done to warrant going from your golden boy to fired in two days?"

"Look I don't... I don't want this spreading around," Harrison leaned in, confidentially. "Cisco was trying to steal company secrets to sell to another lab. I caught him getting into files he didn't have access permissions for and when I realized what he was really doing... he was a terrible liar."

And Harrison was a disturbingly good one. If Hartley hadn't seen the files for himself - if Cisco hadn't come straight to him that Saturday after being fired - then he might've even believed Wells.

"Son of a bitch," Hartley breathed, running a hand over his face. "This'll ruin his career." If Harrison could make people believe the lie, it'd completely fuck Cisco over.

Hopefully Dr. McGee would be willing to listen to what Hartley had to say about all of this.

"Well, I'd like to hope this is just a youthful mistake on his part and certainly don't want it going any farther than the two of us. He's still a bright young man, so I hope that..."

"What, that he'll learn his lesson?" Hartley gave a brittle laugh. "Snow and Raymond are going to be pissed when they get back."

"I'll handle Caitlin and Ronnie," Harrison promised. "Go home, Hartley. Take the rest of the week off, at minimum. Promise me you're going to see your therapist."

Hartley nodded. "I saw her yesterday afternoon, actually. Came back from Starling on the second train of the morning." He sighed and nodded. "Alright. I'll go. I don't like it, especially given what you've said about Ramon. But I'll go."

"Home, Hartley. Get some sleep. You look awful."

* * *

Hartley did not go home. Much as he'd have liked to go nap, that wasn't in the cards for him at the moment.

Instead he went to Mercury Labs.

"Just tell her Hartley Rathaway is here to see her," he repeated to McGee's new secretary. "She'll make time for me."

He got a dubious look in return and the woman picked up her phone. "Dr. McGee, there's a... Hartley Rathaway here to see you." There was a momentary pause and then sighed, "yes ma'am," and hung up.

The door to McGee's office creaked open and Tina McGee herself peered out. "That'll be all, Janice," Tina said, giving her secretary a long look that made Hartley wonder if Janice was making herself a nuisance to more than just him. But Tina turned towards Hartley and smiled. "Hartley, it's good to see you. Finally leaving STAR Labs behind for greener pastures here at Mercury? Please say yes, I've got a project that'd be perfect for you to run."

Hartley smiled wanly as he walked over and shook her hand. "I'm afraid what I'm here to discuss with you isn't good news. Can we...?" he glanced between her office and Janice.

Tina nodded, ushering Hartley inside. "Of course. Water?"

"Yes, please," Hartley seated himself not at McGee's desk but at a small, comfortable sitting area she had set up near large windows overlooking the city. The view wasn't exactly comforting - Hartley could see his parents' company from here - but the day was sunny and bright and that helped settle him.

"What's wrong, Hartley?" She handed him a water bottle and sat in the chair across from him. "Has something happened with Harrison?"

"In a manner of speaking." Hartley let out a shaky breath and started from the top. "I went to Starling city for a funeral this weekend. Tommy Merlyn was my friend and... I was supposed to be taking time off from work after his death. Harrison assigned some of my work to a rather bright mechanical engineer of ours. Cisco Ramon. Talented, but kind of eccentric. The type that wouldn't know how to dress professionally if a radioactive dress-code bit him on the ass."

"Hartley," Tina chided, smiling in amusement. "Yes, I do know the type. Have quite a few of those here, which is why we've got the lab coats."

He let out a shaky breath and uncapped his water, taking a long drink. "Cisco found evidence of a saboteur. There was small error I probably wouldn't have noticed at all, but he was more familiar with the part of the accelerator being discussed and... he found evidence of someone hiding the original plans of the accelerator and substituting in fakes. Proof that the accelerator we're finalizing has massive flaws in it - cumulative small errors that... it's going to explode, Tina. If Harrison turns that thing on, it'll explode and take a good chunk of the city with it."

"Mr. Ramon brought the evidence of this to you?" Tina asked, sounding - and looking - rather shocked by Hartley's pronouncement.

Hartley nodded, "but only after he took the evidence to Harrison. And Harrison fired him to cover it up."

"He did what?" There's disbelief at war with righteous anger in her eyes, which is actually rather comforting.

"Cisco saved some of the files and brought them to me. Not the most legal response, but he was desperate and hoping I'd be more reasonable than Harrison. And I went in to STAR Labs this morning at six and spent two hours re-confirming everything Cisco brought to me. The accelerator is a mess, Tina. I still have to visually confirm some of this, but just the documents alone are damning enough. And when I tried to get Harrison to talk to me about what happened, he lied to me. Tried to claim that Ramon was stealing secrets to sell to a competitor. I let him think I bought the act for now, but..."

"What the hell is he thinking?" Tina muttered. "Harrison and I used to be friends. I'm sure you know that." She waited for Hartley to nod. "The accelerator was his fiance's brain child. It was supposed to be a joint venture between Mercury Labs and their as-of-yet unnamed startup. But she died in a car accident and Harrison... it was like looking into the eyes of a stranger. I didn't know that man anymore and any attempts to get to know this person who'd taken his place...

"It always concerns me when he takes an interest in a young genius, like yourself. Because he has a tendency of promising them the world and then chewing them up." Tina stared out the window for a long moment. "How can I help?"

Hartley smiled, his first real smile of the day, and felt a little weight lift off him. "Cisco's meeting with lawyers right now and I'll be joining their planning session after lunch. We're planning to go at this from two directions; getting the city to file an injunction to prevent further progress on the accelerator and working with a member of the press to get our story out there. We need outside validation of our findings, though. While it won't look good if that validation comes from Mercury Labs, I was hoping you had some recommendations for us? And... somewhere down the line, Cisco and I are both going to need new jobs."

"You've got a standing job offer, as always," Tina promised, "and if this engineer is as good as you say he is, I'd be delighted to hire him on." She got up and headed for her desk. "Now, for independent verification purposes..."

* * *

Hartley takes his list of labs and engineers to contact for verifying their findings with the accelerator and goes home. He collapses on the couch and passes out for about an hour or so, waking to his phone ringing.

It's Laurel calling and she rattles off two addresses. The first is where he can pick up their lunch order, they got Thai and ordered his favorite for him, for which Hartley is grateful... and surprised that Laurel remembered that. The second address is of a small law firm. He tries not to think about how much money in lawyers fees this could lead too, but he's not sure how much he can depend on Oliver financially considering his mother's current circumstances.

He tells himself Laurel wouldn't send them to someone who'd bankrupt them and heads out to pick up the food.

Hartley shows up at the building the law firm is in armed with food, the list from Dr. McGee, and ready to access his protected cache of the hidden STAR Labs files.

The next eight hours are spent pulling explaining - and re-explaining - how the accelerator works and how the alterations to the original plans change its function and how the city is fucked if it gets turned on. But by the time they're done for the night, the lawyers are firmly on their side and have an outline of what they need to do to get the city to file an injunction against STAR Labs to prevent further work on the accelerator, pending an audit. They've also got the start of a good case against any lawsuits Harrison might raise against Cisco or Hartley, which is a relief. Their state apparently has some very robust whistle-blower laws after some snafu with an architectural firm a few years earlier and Hartley's absolutely pleased to hear it.

They've even got a DA in mind to contact for coordinating with the city to get the injunction files: DA Cecile Horton. The next step is to figure out what reporter to contact to take the information public. Hartley's leaning towards Mason Bridge, who has a large readership with the Central City Picture News, a history of breaking scandals not unlike what they're dealing with here, and an impressive ability to make difficult topics easier to understand for laymen readers. Apparently he's also got an ego and can be a pain in the ass, but it's not like the same can't be said of Hartley.

Still, Hartley is glad to be out of the office at nine, stretching his legs as he walks back to his car.

"Have you contacted Ronnie and Caitlin yet?" Hartley asks Cisco before the engineer gets into the passenger seat of Laurel's rental.

"I... I was going to wait until tomorrow." Cisco can barely look at Hartley which just makes the lie more obvious. But he lets it go.

* * *

Ronnie and Caitlin are a few hours behind Central City's time zone. So it's not exactly an unreasonable hour of the night for him to be calling them.

He just... isn't sure how to tell them any of this without Caitlin jumping to the conclusion that its all somehow Hartley's fault. She's never liked him. Though the feeling is rather mutual. She thinks he's a pretentious asshole and he thinks she has an annoying tendency to jump to conclusions. For the most part they've been content to interact at work as little as possible. Ronnie, however, is almost a friend.

"Hey, Hartley, how're you holding up?" Ronnie greets him after only one ring and Hartley...

He has to take a deep breath to keep from crying. He'd already contacted Ronnie once since the Undertaking happened in Starling City because he needed someone to talk to about Tommy. At the time, he'd been insistent that Ronnie stay on his honeymoon, that Hartley still had Harrison's support to get through this. Now he needed to ask for the exact opposite.

"You know the saying 'when it rains, it pours'?" Hartley curled around a pillow. "It's hailing right about now. While I was in Starling, Harrison fired Cisco."

"What?" Ronnie made an odd noise. "Can I put you on speaker? This sounds like something Cait should hear."

"You should, because it is." Hartley waited for a moment as the sound from his phone changed. "On speaker now?"

"Yeah," Ronnie said at the same time as Caitlin's more prim, "yes."

"Okay, so... so while I was at Starling City for Tommy's funeral last week, Harrison fired Cisco."

"You're joking," Snow interrupted, "Hartley, this isn't funny..."

"No, it's not funny," he snapped. "It's incredibly fucked up and the situation here is really bad. Cisco found proof of sabotage to the accelerator. Cumulative errors so bad that if we turn this thing on in December, we'll blow ourselves and part of the city up. And Harrison fired Cisco to cover it up. So Cisco went all the way to Starling City with what proof he could hang on to, which was a lot, I'm impressed about how he went about this when he had to have been panicking... he brought it to me because he was hoping I could get Harrison to do the right thing. And today Harrison lied to me about what happened. He tried to sell me a story about Ramon stealing company secrets."

Caitlin's swearing is impressive. Hartley has to wait for Ronnie to calm her back down.

Honestly, everyone thinks Ronnie's the hot head of the two of them, but Caitlin's the volcano. How no one other than Hartley's ever noticed this, he has no idea.

"Why hasn't Cisco called us?" Ronnie finally asks.

"You're on your honeymoon and he doesn't want to ruin it, he wants to shield you from what's happening here for a little while longer, he's afraid you'll believe Harrison over him even though he knows rationally that's unlikely... take your pick." Hartley kicked off his shoes and stretched out on his couch. "Whatever his reasons are... I'm being more practical. And selfish. You two can always have honeymoon 2.0 but this is time sensitive and we need all hands on deck for this. So I need you two to pack your bags tonight and catch a flight back to Central in the morning."

"Of course," Caitlin sounded distracted. "Already looking for the most direct flight we can get."

"I'll start packing our stuff," Ronnie agreed.

Hartley breathed out a sigh of relief. "Caitlin, you have to promise not to go straight to STAR Labs to slap Harrison, or meet with him at all, when you get back. I don't want him knowing you two are back in town until we can figure out how to use your presence against him, okay?" He has to think of this like a chess game. All the pieces need to be in place before Harrison realizes how many new opponents he has.

"That's... no, you're right." She did not sound happy about it. "I get to slap him eventually, though," she muttered, all protective urges when it came to someone hurting Cisco.

"Hartley, what are you planning?" Ronnie asked.

"Who else at STAR Labs would we be safe telling about the flaws in the accelerator? I don't want Harrison catching wind of this, but I don't want everyone at STAR Labs caught flat footed either. If we can have enough people aware of what's coming right before it all goes down, we can hopefully prevent Harrison from obstructing the investigatory audit that needs to happen to fully shut down the accelerator."

Truthfully, Hartley knew that this was the end of STAR Labs. It was going to be ruined - defunct - by the end of the year, if he had to lead the damn charge himself to do it. There was a part of him that hoped maybe, just maybe, Mercury Labs might buy the facility and Hartley could rip it apart and rebuild the accelerator like it should've been from the start... but that was probably a pipe dream. Never gonna happen. All that time and energy he'd poured into the project and... poof. Up like smoke.

"We'll come up with a list by the time we're back in Central," Ronnie promised.

"Will you two need a ride from the airport once you're back?" Hartley waited while they talked it over, the phone clearly going off speaker as their voices went quiet, indistinct.

"Not from the airport," Ronnie told Hartley once his phone went back on speaker. "We'll get an uber back to our place and drop off our luggage. From there we'll have our car, so..."

"Give me a call and I'll let you know where to join us," Hartley promised. "I've got some friends from Starling helping out too; Tommy's girlfriend, Laurel Lance, is a lawyer. She's not registered to practice law in our state, but she had some contacts since her mom lives here. And Oliver and Thea Queen have promised to help, though they're still tied up in Starling dealing with the fallout from their mother's complicity in the Undertaking."

They talk for a few more minutes - Caitlin lets him know which flight they'll be on and what time it's scheduled to land in Central - and then they end the call. Which means Hartley has one last call to make.

He has to let Cisco know Caitlin and Ronnie are on their way back. Hopefully the engineer won't be too pissed off at him for calling them, but... he should've seen it coming. It's not like its the worst thing Hartley's ever done, anyway.

* * *

Notes:

Timeline of Events so Far:

Monday  
Caitlin and Ronnie got married; left on their honeymoon

Wednesday  
The Undertaking decimates the Glades in Starling City

Thursday  
Hartley finds out about Tommy's death and leaves for Starling City  
Oliver makes plans to get Tommy buried that weekend so the funeral won't be targeted by angry people looking to someone to blame

Friday  
Cisco discovers the accelerator is deeply flawed, gets fired

Saturday  
Tommy's funeral  
Cisco goes to Starling to find Hartley and show him the documents he managed to hang on to  
Hartley recognizes the danger the accelerator poses and agrees to help Cisco  
Oliver and Thea offer their help

Sunday  
Hartley goes to Laurel to ask for her help

Monday  
Hartley, Cisco, and Laurel return to Central City  
Laurel meets with her mother and starts looking for a law firm suited to help them get the city on board and protect both Cisco and Hartley as whistle blowers  
Hartley and Cisco continue going over the documents they have so far and form a plan for Hartley to secure the versions still on STAR Labs servers

This story picks up Monday evening as Hartley's leaving Cisco's apartment after their brain storming session and covers the events of Tuesday from his point of view.


End file.
